Edward G. Robinson is happy to have his own apartment at last but can barely afford rent. He says he has been sending off job applications for weeks. "I don't care what I do, as long as I can do a little bit better than what I'm doing now," he said.

Edward G. Robinson is left with about $20 each month after he pays rent on his studio apartment in St. Paul. Once homeless, he frequents food shelters to make ends meet. "If anything happens, I'm homeless," he said. "That's a scary situation."

The number of people who can barely afford a place to live has reached an all-time high, creating a new kind of client for homeless shelters – the almost-homeless.

“I am not a failure,” said “Lovie” Robinson, 22, as he slumped at a table in the Dorothy Day Center in St. Paul. “It’s just that there are not a lot of jobs for people like me.”

Like many of the near-homeless, he goes to the shelter for food and supplies so he can pay his rent. His monthly income is $795, and he pays $600 rent for himself, his 1-year-old daughter and a roommate.

“I eat a lot of pasta and rice,” he said.

Robinson is one of a growing number of Minnesotans paying more than half their incomes in rent or mortgage payments, regarded as the point at which housing is not affordable. That number spiked to 14 percent in 2009, after decades of hovering near 8 percent.

Some reasons for the burst in the ranks of the almost-homeless are familiar, including high unemployment and a drop in wages. Others are not as well-known:

– Although the cost of buying a home is falling, rents are increasing.

– Housing that is affordable for low-income earners is increasingly unprofitable for developers.

– Neighborhood resistance to housing that’s affordable for low-income earners is stiffening in the status-conscious suburbs.

– State and federal subsidies have dried up.

The bottom line is that more people than ever are living in rented or purchased homes they can’t afford. And they are fighting desperately to keep them – even if it means eating in homeless shelters.

“I can get by. I can sacrifice things,” said Justin Cooper, 31, who came to Dorothy Day recently for a free meal.

He said he hates the idea of living in taxpayer-subsidized housing, so he spends two-thirds of his income to rent his $535-a-month apartment.

Cooper, who has a mental disability, proudly hangs on to his home. He battles the lurking fear of a single unplanned expense that could end his dream of independence.

“It’s a lot of stressful,” he said.

A DIFFERENT WORLD FOR RENTERS

It seems like an odd time for a housing crisis.

For years, headlines have trumpeted the falling costs of buying a home, low interest rates and the once-in-a-lifetime savings on foreclosed houses.

But that’s irrelevant to renters. Curiously, even as home-buying costs have fallen, rental costs have increased – especially in Minnesota.

Of 12 Midwestern states, Minnesota is worst for rental affordability for minimum-wage workers, according to a report issued in May by the Minnesota Housing Partnership.

The report said statewide rents increased an inflation-adjusted 7 percent from 2000 to 2009 – as the income of renters fell 21 percent.

It’s not just the almost-homeless choking the rental market – it’s recent college graduates or anyone else unable to find work.

“Everyone is competing for the lower end of the market,” said Martha Eaves, public benefits supervisor for the Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services.

For a typical two-bedroom apartment, a person would have to work year-round, with no vacations, earning $16 per hour. The typical Minnesota renter makes $11.61 an hour.

“Families are coming in who used to be middle class and now are the working poor,” said Judy Davis, an outreach worker with East Side Family in St. Paul.

Minnesota homeowners are also stretched thin, but not as badly as renters. Homeowners paying half their incomes or more on mortgages have doubled to 9 percent in the past decade. That’s still far below the percentage of renters who do the same – 23 percent.

NO INCENTIVES FOR DEVELOPERS

Why not build homes that people can afford? In Minnesota, that seems tougher than ice fishing in June.

In 1997, the Metropolitan Council set city-by-city goals for building housing units, both owned and rented, that low-income earners could afford.

Those goals were all but ignored. Out of 90 cities, only three met their goals. Between 2001 and 2009, as demand for housing soared, construction of new, affordable units per year actually fell by a third.

That’s partly because most developers can’t make money on such housing.

Start with the price of land. In suburban areas, $100,000 is not uncommon for a bare lot. When the land cost is that high, almost no developer can make money building a $200,000 house or a low-rent apartment building.

“If you were a private developer, would you want to build a $350,000 condo or low-income family housing?” said Jim Anderson, planner for low-income and homeless services with the Ramsey County Human Services Department.

Overall, Minnesota’s housing costs are $98 per square foot – more than Wisconsin’s $92, Iowa’s $77 or North and South Dakota’s $71.

Housing Partnership Executive Director Chip Halbach said the owner of a new 1,000-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment would have to charge a monthly rent of about $1,750 to break even – well above present market-rate rents.

And there is an additional cost from hassles, delays and protests. Developers have to contend with growing resistance from neighbors, especially in the suburbs.

Homeowners have seen their own home prices fall and are more sensitive to anything that might hurt property values – such as rent-subsidized housing.

“In the suburbs, there is no political will to make it happen,” said Eaves, of Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services.

Suburban regulations help keep the cost of housing high. Most suburbs have zoning and building codes encouraging big, expensive houses, as they compete with other suburbs for the prestige of “executive homes.” There are entire cities with no zoning for apartments.

Even well-intentioned federal regulations can hurt, Halbach said.

One requires that when subsidized apartments for middle-class people are built, the homeless must be provided their own separate units.

This is a mistake, Halbach said. Neighbors will fight tooth and nail against such housing, he said, while they would accept housing for the middle class.

Racism is a factor, said Eaves. To her, the urban-suburban split of race and wealth looks like Minnesota-style apartheid.

“I live in the city, and I feel like I am going to outer space when I go to the suburbs,” she said. “The fancy schools, the multiple resources, the playgrounds…it is unbelievable to me how we allow this separation of wealth to take over our communities.

“In the suburbs there are so many people who don’t even know a person of color,” Eaves added. “They have theirs, and they don’t want to share.”

SUBSIDIES DISAPPEARING

Those are the reasons subsidies are needed.

But, of course, government subsidies are evaporating.

There are 4,000 Minnesota households on the waiting list for federal Section 8 housing subsidies. Get on the list today, and you will wait until 2019 to get a subsidy for your monthly rent.

Other state and federal programs have been cut as well, which sends the almost-homeless into the streets.

“The bottom line is that our economy requires a percentage of people in jobs that can’t afford market-rate housing, and there are not enough subsidies to make up the difference,” said Ramsey County’s Anderson.

Why can’t the almost-homeless move in with friends or family members?

If they could, they would have done it long ago, Halbach said. A spot check of people at the Dorothy Day Center during June showed almost all have lost contact with their family and friends. They each gave their own tortured reasons – an ongoing grudge against a mother, abuse from a dad, alienation from a sister.

“It’s always been surprising to me – one in 10 Minnesota households are on public assistance,” Anderson said. “One in 10 has burned out their support system or never had it.”

HANGING ON

Despite the odds against them, the almost-homeless keep hanging on.

One of them is Edward G. Robinson – named, he explained, because his parents loved the actor of the same name.

Robinson pays about 80 percent of his income – $543 a month – to rent a studio apartment on Seventh Street in St. Paul.

After paying utilities, he said, he has about $20 left each month.

“Money is tight,” said Robinson, 54.

Vivid in his memory are his homeless days, when he was stealing hot dogs from Rainbow Foods and jamming food into his pockets when visiting friends.

After that, he said, his tiny apartment feels like heaven.

“Today, I got somewhere to stay,” he said.

He’s determined to hold on to it, no matter what.

Robinson said he is getting by, despite a financial cushion as thin as his monthly $20 bill. He saves money by eating two meals a day at the Dorothy Day Center and is looking for work in a factory or warehouse.

“I will work for a dollar, two dollars,” he said. “I just need something to make it.”

Bob is a 40-year veteran (yes, he is grizzled) who edited one Pulitzer Prize winner and wrote two that were nominated. He has also worked in Des Moines, Colorado Springs and Palo Alto. He writes about the suburbs, the environment, housing, religion -- anything but politics. Secret pleasures: Kayaking on the Mississippi on the way to work, doughnuts brought in by someone else. Best office prank: Piling more papers onto Fred Melo’s already trash-covered desk.

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